Fuck.
She retrieves a pistol.
Then she points it straight at him.
My blood runs cold. They exchange words, and it’s even harder to hear what they’re saying with the commotion of dispersing students surrounding me.
My feet stay frozen. I’ve been through at least one drill a year about this since I was five—shooter means take cover. Get the hell away if you can, and don't draw their attention.
But none of those drills involved what to do if someone is pointing a gun at your boyfriend.
Everyone else is gone, and still, I don't move.
Where the fuck is campus police?Maybe they’re waiting for someonearmed, and that doesn’t help.
That’s when Callum’s mom notices me, standing alone, and exposed.
Her face darkens even more as she takes me in, and I’m expecting her to turn the gun on me.
Callum follows his mom’s gaze. His eyes land on mine, and his expression crumples.
Jesus, I hate seeing him like that.
“You.” His mom spits that one word out, grating, low, and loud, and it sends a chill down my back. “Get over here so I can deal with you.”
That sounds like the last thing I should do—getcloserto the unstable, gun-wielding zealot.
But she wants that, and I want her to stop pointing a gun at my boyfriend.
“Lower the gun. Then I’ll go!” I yell back.
“You don’t tell me what to do!” His mom waves her hands around, her fingeron the fucking trigger. Who on earth gave her a gun?
“Do you want me to come over?”
She grits her teeth. “Do you want me to shoot Callum? What’s stopping me?”
The fact that I’ll kill you myself if you do.
My resolve breaks. “Just…please lower it. Or at least aim away from him.”
She turns the barrel to me, and my heart races. I dig my fingernails into my thumb—the sharp, biting pain registers, but it doesn’t begin to compete with the nerves in my stomach.
I send a pointed look at Callum, silently trying to tell him to make a run for it, but he stays motionless.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m walking now.”
Putting one foot in front of the other, I make slow work of the walk over to where the three of them are gathered. Anything to stall for time.
I stop a few yards away from the two of them, keeping Callum in my field of vision. His mom sneers at me like I’m smeared excrement on the bottom of her shoe, and if I wasn’t staring into the muzzle of a pistol, I’d give that contempt back ten times worse.
“Damn infidel,” she mutters.
Huh. Her moralsandher vocabulary are stuck in biblical times.
I don’t reply.
She sizes me up, fixing her steely eyes on me. I know who Callum got his from, and it's uncanny. I don't break my stare, and she blinks first, thankfully lowering the gun. I let out a quiet breath, not knowing what’s coming next.
